Wednesday, May 09, 2007

THE CHILDREN OF POSTMODERN NIHILISM

Last year Michael Barone wrote a very insightful column where he discussed the internal enemies this country faces:

Our covert enemies are harder to identify, for they live in large numbers within our midst. And in terms of intentions, they are not enemies in the sense that they consciously wish to destroy our society. On the contrary, they enjoy our freedoms and often call for their expansion. But they have also been working, over many years, to undermine faith in our society and confidence in its goodness. These covert enemies are those among our elites who have promoted the ideas labeled as multiculturalism, moral relativism and (the term is Professor Samuel Huntington's) transnationalism.

At the center of their thinking is a notion of moral relativism. No idea is morally superior to another. Hitler had his way, we have ours -- who's to say who is right? No ideas should be "privileged," especially those that have been the guiding forces in the development and improvement of Western civilization. Rich white men have imposed their ideas because of their wealth and through the use of force. Rich white nations imposed their rule on benighted people of color around the world. For this sin of imperialism they must forever be regarded as morally stained and presumptively wrong. Our covert enemies go quickly from the notion that all societies are morally equal to the notion that all societies are morally equal except ours, which is worse.

Barone was speaking, of course, about the postmodern philosophical ideas that have permeated all aspects and levels of western culture. Looking back, it is hard to know when this nonsense became so egregious, but I first began to notice it in the early 90's; and when my daughter started school, I became mildly concerned because it already seemed to be established and entrenched in the elementary school curriculum.

In order to have achieved that coup, these ideas must have been around for at least a generation; and absorbed by key people who would later be in positions of educational, artistic and political power and able to multiply the vector of its transmission and inculcation into a new generation.

Ideas are a powerful force in the world. Those who doubt that statement have never studied philosophy and the history of ideas.

Bad ideas are like a potent stench that try as you might with perfumes and deodorizers, you cannot eliminate until you finally break down and take out the trash. Of course, humans can function somewhat with the pervasive smell; but the only reason they survive when bad ideas are driving their actions is because the idea(s) are never applied consistently. If they were to apply the ideas consistently, then they would simply be overcome from the toxic fumes.

To the extent that such intellectual garbage is applied in the real world, there is usually a 1:1 correspondence to the degree that human life is impaired.

I have written about this many times (see here, here, here, here, here and here, for example) because I think it is essential that postmodern garbage not only be fought in the present, by exposing their stench for all to smell; but by long-term strategies to bring reason and reality back into the education of our young people, who are losing the ability to think critically.

Barone was actually not talking about the "Jersey Jihadis" who wanted to blow up soldiers at Fort Dix--those fanatics are clearly overt enemies of this country, who have enjoyed its hospitality even as they plotted their homicidal fantasies. No, Barone was talking about covert enemies like this guy, and this one, who denigrates, dismisses and mocks any who dare to even suggest that we are in a real war with real enemies--let alone those who actually take up arms against them. The former post links this blogger, who "tries not to be a cynical person", but is absolutely exemplary at being a completely clueless idiot whose ongoing disgust of America is obvious. And, what can you say about the firedoglake blogger, who hails from a site with the intellectual depth of a mosquito-infested puddle.

Nothing is ever good enough for these narcissistically overinvested clowns. If a plot is broken up--then it has been OVERHYPED. It's never different, or important--unless it conforms to your deranged ideology. In fact, you can bet your sweet bippie that if a terrorist plot in this country was ever again successful (and they will be successful eventually), these jokers will give the actual perpetrators a free pass and without passing "Go" will proceed directly to blaming Bush, Cheney and the usual leftist fall guys. They will complain that the dots were not connected; that Bush and Cheney et al have not made us safer; or, that Bush and Cheney are behind it in order to consolidate power; and that the poor oppressed terrorists were only responding to our evil.

You know the drill.

Their hatred of anything that does not conform to their ideological template; and their fear that the template is broken beyond repair is obvious. They are fighting for their very ideological lives. Everything they believe in is at stake; and they would rather see America go up in flames than to have to examine their premises or admit that their marxist/socialist-tinged narcissism has brought nothing but death and misery to the human world.

Just take a look at the nonsense in this post which is laughably ridiculous while simultaneously being breathtakining deceptive (be sure to read the comments of these losers). As Siggy pointed out in an email:

I haven't laughed so hard in a long time.

If they were so concerned about the KKK, they'd be up in arms that Robert Byrd, former Klan kleagle (recruiter) was still in office. A few years ago, he announced that 'the Klan really wasn't so bad. They did lots of good things.'You gotta love lefty hypocrisy!

Of course, there is hypocrisy on both sides of the political spectrum, but their hypocrisy is so incredibly virtuous and done for the good of us all. Otherwise we might succumb to an attack of blind reason (like the French recently did) and abandon the lunatic...errr, I mean the "reality-based" left's agenda.

How do they justify such nonsense? It is all a matter of marvelous moral relativity; contradictory discourses, deceptive rhetoric; combined with a simply amazing and mind-boggling talent of being able to ignore objective reality under any circumstance where it punctures a hole in your ideological bubble.

These are the children of postmodernism; steeped in the nihilism of our day. They believe in nothing and stand for nothing. They utter the same old tired and worn self-serving platitudes of a defunct and dangerous world view, but anyone can see that the fire has gone out of their movement. They are losing, and they know it. But they are so narcissistically invested in that world view, that they tremble in fear whenever the real world presents them with something that contradicts their religiously held beliefs.

They are in a great deal of terror at the moment. Not, of course from Jihadis (which would be rational) but because their world view is under attack whenever a George W. Bush is elected; or a Sarkozy or Merkel, for that matter. They cling to the Hugo Chavez types for dear life; and pray that thugs like Ahmadinejad and Zawahiri are able to humiliate and defeat their real enemy, which is America and all it stands for.

These children were raised on postmodern milk; and their brain development has reached a point of no return and is functioning now for the sole purpose of blocking out the real world; rather than trying to understand it. Reality, truth and reason are far too dangerous for their childish beliefs and behaviors.

If you can convince children that objective reality is an illusion; that A does not equal A; that black is white; and that good is bad; if you can make them accept that everything is subjective and relative; then you own them. They will believe any drivel. Through the appropriate manipulation of language, everything can be distorted, without the messy need to resort to facts, logic, or reason.

Without a rational metaphysics--or worldview--that explains the nature of existence and reality; and without an epistemology that says our minds are able to acquire knowledge of that reality; then it is easy to enforce conformity, totalitarian thinking, and political passivity.

Ethics, or the study of how man should behave in the world--or, what is good and what is evil--is totally dependent on both metaphysics and epistemology, because it is impossible to make choices withoug knowledge; just as it is impossible to have knowledge without a reality that can be known by our minds.

What matters in the postmodernist's convoluted thinking is not truth or falsity--only the effectiveness of the language used. Lies, distortions, ad hominem attacks; attempts to silence opposing views--all are strategies that are perfectly satisfactory if they achieve the desired effect. Ideas and reason must make way for reification of feelings; and freedom is replaced by thought control.

If you wonder why they exhibit so much animosity and emotional hysteria directed against traditional values and ideas; and against Republicans, neocons, Christians, Males etc. etc.; then understand the nature of the postmodern nihilism that defines and sustains them. The pervasive and unrelenting trickle down of postmodern theories and thinking in education, art, politics and all the social areas of life has resulted in a crop of humans who are opposed to thinking because it is far to dangerous to their secular religious beliefs. Even science has not been immune from the nihilism and anti-reason, anti-reality agenda of the postmodernists.

If you want to understand why nothing seems to make sense and the most blatant contradictions and relativistic meanderings are presented as absolute truth; why language is abused and words don't seem to have the same definitions anymore; and can sometimes even mean the opposite of what they used to; why photographs can lie; why contradictory discourses and distortion of truth; and ad hominem attacks and a distinct reluctance to face reality are all a part of the "reality-based" community--you need look no further than postmodernism.

And finally, if you want to understand why that which is truly evil --embracing death, slavery, and nihilism--is now presented and even trumpeted as the "good" while the good is dismissed, denigrated and mocked; then you would do well to understand the psychology and ideology of the covert enemies of America and of civilization--the adult children of postmodern nihilism.